belgianwaffle

21 Questions for my Children – A Mother’s Day Reflection


Posted in: Family, Middle Child, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

I lifted this from the excellent clothesline.ie many years ago. What can I say? Some posts are in gestation longer than others. The smaller your children are, the better it works. Some of these thoughts are from a long time ago and things have definitely moved on on the sock front.

Younger

  • 1. Why would you use your sock as a bookmark?
  • 2. Is there a reason you store socks behind the bookshelf in your room?
  • 3. Why is your duvet on the kitchen floor?
  • 4. Why do you choose to read lying on the floor behind the sofa?

Older

  • 5. Why have you chosen to ignore my advice about needing a coat on your school tour to Munich in winter?
  • 6. What do you do with protractors? Is there a black market for them?
  • 7. Is there any chance we might have more than half an hour’s notice that GAA training is on this evening?
  • 8. Will anyone answer my WhatsApp messages? Or my texts? Or my calls?
  • 10. Why do you need 25 different dice? And why are they all ten sided?
  • 11. Why would you only tell me on the morning we are leaving on a skiing holiday that you only own one pair of waterproof shoes and these have a hole?

Now

  • 12. Why are you getting up at 4 in the morning to complete your assignment?
  • 13. When will you be home for dinner? Will you be home for dinner? In fact
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    , will we ever have family dinner together again during the week?
  • 14. Do you have plans for the summer? Do they involve coming on holidays with me? Will you be in a position to let me know before the price of flights becomes stratospheric?
  • 15. How many of your primary school books do you think you need to keep now that you are in university?
  • 16. Would you not like to come on a walk with your parents? [Taking me back to my school days – Latin num expecting the answer “No”]
  • 17. What are you up to over there in England?
  • 18. Will you ever come home?
  • 19. How is it that you are all adults now?
  • 20. Have you everything you need to make your way in the world?
  • 21. Do you still love your Mama?

Parenting Achievement Level Partially Unlocked


Posted in: Middle Child, Princess, Twins, Youngest Child

Last Thursday night was a landmark night. Mr. Waffle and I were in bed and all three of our children were out on the town. Michael was at another ball, since he did not enjoy the last one only the week before, I was not optimistic but he had a good time; Daniel was off at a club (do you know that they still stamp your hand on the way in and play Abba?); and herself was at a dinner party (she talked to us on the way there, she was not particularly looking forward to it but a good time was had by all etc.).

You might think that my work here is done but not entirely. During the week I drove Daniel to training; turned around and went to collect Michael from a play (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” – hilarious, apparently, he had the time of his life, where did I get these children?); then drove back to the training grounds to collect Daniel but as I turned in the gate, got a text from him saying he had got a lift home with a friend. Two hours in the car mid-week my friends.

Snow Snow Come Out in the Snow!*


Posted in: Middle Child, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Twins, Work, Youngest Child

It snowed on Friday. By coincidence, I worked from home on Friday. I almost never work from home. It’s handy for me to get into the office and working from home reminds me of the grim, grim, grim first couple of months of Covid. But I do work from home very occasionally and I was scheduled for my ergonomic workstation assessment which has to be done from your home workstation. You wouldn’t think this would be a source of confusion but it obviously was as I got several reminder emails that you had to be at your home workstation to do it. You will be pleased to hear that my home workstation is entirely ergonomic. I certainly was and quite surprised too.

Anyway, being at home gave me a chance to admire the snow. I remember when it snowed last year and I was on my career break I got to go to the park to admire the snow. But, sure look, snow is snow.

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I cannot say that I was equally delighted with the icy rain and slush I had to contend with that evening when (sticking to my principles)

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, I cycled to dinner and a comedy gig. The journey there and back again was grim (no actual dragons encountered but does needle sharp rain count as a serious obstacle?). I also felt like I was the oldest person at the comedy gig, not helped by the fact that the comedian’s Dad was a former colleague of mine and the butt of some mild joshing which I very much felt applied to me also mutatis mutandis. Still, overall an enjoyable venture and if my inner smugness about cycling in the appalling weather didn’t keep me warm, at least my waterproofs kept me dry.

*This is from a book I read to the children when they were small but, alas, the author’s name eludes me.

Did I Not Dance With You in Brabant Once?*


Posted in: Belgium, Mr. Waffle, Siblings, Work

I was at a round table event during the week. I was introduced to the chair and we looked at each other for a bit and I said, “Did I last meet you in an escape room?” I had. He is a buddy of my sister’s partner and we all went to an escape room for his (sister’s partner’s) birthday last year (look, it takes all kinds).

As I looked around the room there was another man who looked familiar. During a break in proceedings I asked him, “Were you by any chance working in [place] in Brussels in November 1998?” He confirmed – looking a bit puzzled, I have to say – that he was. “You were sitting beside me at dinner the night I met my husband,” I said to him. He was surprised. We both knew the birthday girl – a friend in common – but he had no recollection of the dinner. Look, more important to me than to him. We hadn’t met since but I recognised him because he was unchanged. He was a perfectly normal looking 50ish year old but he was a very old looking 30ish year old. He was bald as an egg then and very slender and, obviously, he’s still bald now and also, less obviously, still very slender.

As I was scuttling away after the event , I ran into the next group coming into the venue. One of them looked a bit familiar. I pressed on. She called out to me, “Don’t I know you?” I turned back. She is a friend of a friend who had twins last year. My friend suggested we meet to give her some advice – although as my twins are not 18 my advice was a bit…dated. When I gave out my advice, she was 7 months pregnant but she had had her babies since and was able to show me a photo of them on her phone and very cute they were too – they looked great and she looked great; obviously my advice was excellent.

Even by Irish standards where everybody knows everybody, this was a lot.

*The title for this post was suggested by my first born. It’s from “Love’s Labour’s Lost” apparently.

Out and About


Posted in: Dublin, Ireland, Middle Child, Twins

Last weekend I agreed to play a tennis match at 9 on Sunday morning. I definitely regretted it at 8 but at 11 I felt amazing, delighted with myself.

When we had some people around for dinner a couple of weeks ago, one of them brought us a miniature jigsaw in a tube which is something Spanish people do after dinner. Because they are psychotic.

I spent ages doing it doubtless ruining my eyesight and this was the unsatisfactory result.

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But then while I was out at tennis, Daniel texted me this.

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And what a treat.

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Mr. Waffle and I went out to Howth taking our bikes on the DART (suburban train). We had a lovely lunch and we went for a walk. I was living my best life, I can tell you.

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And this is where hubris caught up with me. I suggested that we cycle home which is somewhere between 15 and 20kms. God, I nearly died. We cycled around by the bay and the wind was vigorously against us the whole way. We had to stop half way for me to have a restorative cup of tea and when I got home all I could do was sit on the sofa for the evening whining about exhaustion.

I had another tennis match at 9 this morning (again the regret/satisfaction cycle) but all I had planned for the rest of the day was my Sunday afternoon bookclub which was altogether less physically demanding than last weekend’s adventure.

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, yes, of course that’s why you’re here, I saw “Zone of Interest” with a friend during the week (Mr. Waffle having refused to come). I thought it was really excellent. It’s a new angle on the holocaust which I would have thought impossible. It is truly chilling while showing no violence at all but set to a horrifying soundscape that I will remember for a long time.

I also took myself to the new exhibition in the Gallery which is lots of Dutch head studies – lots of Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck etc. I found it reasonably enjoyable but the stand-out find for me was an artist called Michael Sweerts who was born in Brussels in 1618. Here are a couple of his head studies which I found startlingly modern.

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And how was your own weekend? Not too exhausting, I trust.

Pancakes


Posted in: Mr. Waffle

An Irish friend of ours lives in the Netherlands, is married to a Dutch man, has four Dutch children, speaks fluent Dutch and works in the Dutch public service. Perhaps bowing to the inevitable , she has recently become a Dutch citizen but, like all Cork people in exile, she remains very much a Cork person also.

I thought of her during the week as on pancake Tuesday, I always recall her absolute outrage at having seen in a shop a packet of pancake mix emblazoned with the words “Just add an egg and milk.” “It’s just flour,” she said, “how can people not know they’re just being sold overpriced flour?” How indeed? Her reaction is the perfect combination of Cork/Dutch; a worthy daughter of both speaks.